Throughout his career Kari Soinio has worked on two main themes. In his signature portraiture of the male body he has been studying male corporeality, sexuality and identity. Sense and representation of landscape and place have also been central interest for Soinio. He has been looking at the ways perception and recognition work in our minds through visual representations.
In his auto-portraiture-based work he has taken a critical look into masculinity and femininity in maleness, showing highly ambiguous bodies with traits of both. He enjoys addressing and challenging masculine complacency and self-importance. The complexities of male self-conciousness and body image are a constant source of inspiration for him. The tension between the sense of vulnerability and expressions of strength in masculine cultures are under scrutiny in his work. He is especially interested in the gendered notion of heroism and the cultural icons of male heroes.
Soinio has experimented extensively with the problematics of perception and representation both in his landscape work and in his auto-portraiture.
He has also addressed the form and shape of the traditional photograph. Soinio's photographic work has often appeared in such unconventional shapes as round, curved or elliptical. He has removed the backgrounds to produce paper doll -like framed images, or he has face mounted images on beveled glass.
Soinio's work often derives from and comments on both popular culture and history of art and photography.